Chapter Text
The first thing Y/N learned about Vought was that crying only made them stay longer.
Not because anybody cared, of course. Nobody in the underground laboratories cared about frightened children. But the scientists liked to observe it. They stood beyond thick panes of reinforced glass with clipboards tucked neatly beneath their arms, watching seven-year-olds scream themselves hoarse in examination chairs while fluorescent lights bleached the rooms into something sterile and inhuman. The crying was measured. Timed. Discussed over coffee.
There were charts for everything in Vought.
Graphs for emotional distress. Charts for adrenal spikes. Reports documenting how long children lasted under physical stress before begging for mercy.
“Heightened distress response.”
“Interesting adrenal activity.”
“Begin second dosage.”
The adults spoke about children the way butchers discussed livestock.Y/N stopped crying after the fourth day.By then, he already understood enough.
His parents had not lost him. Had not misplaced him. Had not been tricked.
They had sold him.
The realization settled somewhere deep inside his chest and stayed there like rot. Even years later, he could still remember the way his mother refused to look at him while signing papers. The way his father’s hands shook while Vought representatives smiled politely beside them. They hadn’t cried. Hadn’t protested. They simply stepped away while strangers led their son toward steel elevators descending deep beneath the earth.
As if looking at him for too long would make them human again.
At night, when the sedatives wore off enough for memory to crawl back into his skull, he replayed the moment endlessly. His mother’s perfume. The polished black shoes of the Vought employees. The way his own small hand had reached toward them while they stepped back instead.He never stopped remembering that.
The facility itself barely felt real. Endless white corridors stretched in every direction beneath buzzing fluorescent lights. The air smelled constantly of bleach, antiseptic, and static electricity. Every surface gleamed with artificial cleanliness. There were no windows anywhere underground. No clocks. No indication of day or night.
Only rooms.
Only tests.
Only numbers.
The children were stripped of their names almost immediately. Y/N became Subject 247-B in reports and documentation, though the scientists occasionally used his real name when trying to coax responses from him during evaluations.The children who survived long enough learned quickly not to ask questions.
Questions earned needles.
Needles earned isolation.
Isolation... well isolation broke people.
Y/N learned that faster than most.
He became quiet in the way injured animals became quiet. Not obedient. Not tame. Just withdrawn, dark eyes lowered beneath thick lashes while nurses drew vial after vial of blood from his arms. He watched everything instead. Memorized everything.
Which guards enjoyed hurting children too much.
Which scientists avoided eye contact during experiments.
Which doors required retinal scans.
How many footsteps it took to reach the testing chambers from his room.
The scientists would snicker behind their drinks to call him “unusually adaptive.” They truly meant emotionally detached.
At seven years old, Y/N already understood that surviving and living were not the same thing.The experiments worsened as the years passed.
Some days involved injections strong enough to make his bones ache beneath his skin for hours afterward. Some days involved sensory deprivation tanks where children floated in darkness until they started hallucinating. Other days, Vought scientists forced the children into combat rooms and watched them fight while executives took notes from observation decks above.
Y/N hated the training rooms most.
They smelled like blood.
The walls were reinforced steel layered thick enough to withstand developing powers. Young supes were pushed against one another constantly— children with enhanced strength throwing punches hard enough to crack ribs, children developing speed abilities ricocheting into walls until bones snapped audibly. The scientists referred to it as “behavioral combat adaptation.”
The children called it survival.
Y/N learned quickly how to endure pain quietly. Bruises faded fast once Compound V fully settled into his bloodstream, but the exhaustion never really disappeared. Every morning began before sunrise— or what he assumed was sunrise. There was no way to tell underground.
Wake-up alarms.
Medical evaluations.
Strength drills.
Psychological testing.
More injections.
More bloodwork.
More screaming echoing down white hallways.The screaming never truly stopped in Vought Tower. It simply became background noise after long enough.
At night, Y/N talked to himself beneath thin laboratory blankets because silence felt alive here. Like something waiting patiently to swallow him whole. Sometimes he whispered memories aloud just to keep them from disappearing.
His own name.
His mother’s voice.
The color of the sky.
Then even those began slipping away.
Years passed strangely underground. Time wasn’t measured naturally anymore. It was measured through injections, punishments, growth charts, and incident reports. Children vanished from neighboring rooms without explanation. Some died during testing. Others were transferred somewhere deeper underground and never seen again.Nobody asked where they went. None seemed to care.
Y/N was nine when the headaches started.
Not ordinary headaches. These felt invasive. Violent. Blinding pressure built behind his eyes until he collapsed vomiting onto pristine tile floors while alarms blared overhead. The first time it happened, blood leaked from his nose and ears simultaneously.The doctors celebrated. That part stayed with him most vividly.
They restrained him to a metal chair while voices overlapped excitedly around him.
“Neurological manifestation—”
“Possible psychic activity—”
“Increase cognitive testing immediately.”
For weeks afterward, Y/N heard things.Thoughts that weren’t his own.Fragments of emotion bleeding into his skull without warning.
Fear. Hunger. Rage.
Some children cried silently in nearby rooms and he heard them anyway. Scientists thought casually about lunch while monitoring him through reinforced glass. One orderly fantasized about hurting his wife. Another debated whether children could truly feel pain the same way adults did.
The facility became unbearably loud.
It seeped into him slowly until other people’s minds became impossible to ignore. Every hallway buzzed with layered thought. Every room felt crowded with noise. Sometimes he pressed shaking hands against his ears trying to block it out before remembering the sounds weren’t physical.
He spent the first few days asking God if he was being punished for a life he once lived. He thought he was dying. Then he thought everyone else might be. The end almsot felt like a sweet release. That was until he discovered he could push back.
Tiny thoughts trickeled from his brain at first.
*Look away.*
*Forget I spoke.*
*Leave me alone.*
People listened more often than they should have.The realization terrified him.Vought of course became ecstatic.
A psychic supe. Marketable. Valuable. Useful.
Executives started appearing more frequently during evaluations, watching him through observation windows while speaking in hushed excited voices. One executive described him as “a demographic goldmine.”
Y/N was too young to fully understand the sentence.Old enough to hate the way it sounded.
The enhanced durability came later. Strength too. Standard secondary abilities almost every successful supe developed eventually. But the telepathy remained the thing Vought cared about most, and they sharpened it mercilessly.
Hours spent inside sensory deprivation chambers. Forced exposure to overlapping thoughts until migraines drove him half-delirious. Scientists ordering him to manipulate weaker-minded staff members while they recorded results.
“Push deeper.”
“Again.”
“Control him.”
When he refused, they punished him. When he succeeded, they punished him less. That was how life worked here.
By ten, Y/N barely spoke aloud anymore. Words felt dangerous in Vought. Every conversation monitored. Every sentence recorded somewhere inside a database. Silence became comfort instead.
Then one night, shortly after his tenth birthday, Y/N heard someone crying. Not through the walls. Inside his head.
*Please.*
The thought struck him so suddenly he sat upright beneath his blankets.
*Please help me.*
Y/N froze completely.
The voice sounded young. Male. Terrified in the exhausted way only children could be. For one horrible second, he thought the facility had finally broken his mind completely. Then the voice came again.
*Please somebody—*
“Who are you?” he thought before realizing how insane that sounded.
Silence followed.
Then—
*You can hear me?*
Y/N’s pulse stuttered violently.
The presence inside his mind shifted sharply with alarm.
*They know you can hear me?* the boy asked quickly.
“No,” Y/N thought back. “I don’t think so.”
Another pause.
Careful this time.
Suspicious.
Then finally:
*My name is John.*
And for the first time since entering Vought, Y/N no longer felt entirely alone.